Japanese

What a term! We have been very busy in Japanese learning about a wide variety of topics across the school from islands and waterways to weather, fruit and sensational cartoon characters. Here’s a glance at what we’ve been up to…

Prep

This term Prep students have been finding out about fruits and consolidating their knowledge of colours, counting,  self-introductions and general classroom vocabulary.

Across the term the children had plenty of opportunity to practise simple dialogue describing their food likes and dislikes. They also made progress with writing and recognising some simple written Japanese Hiragana and kanji characters.

Year One/Two

The Year One and Two students have been exploring the wild, colourful and exciting world of Japanese comics (manga) and anime (cartoons).  We began by  exploring some classic characters from The Golden era of Japanese animation including Doraemon and Anpanman, on the way starting to learn a range of Japanese adjectives to describe people, things and places. As we moved on into more recent comic and cartoon icons such as Sailor Moon, Pikachu and Monkey D Luffy we worked on basic grammar and sentence structure to write about the colourful characters we were exploring.

Year Three and Four

The Year Three and Four students have explored weather and seasons in Japanese. They learned a wide range of vocabulary to describe the weather across a variety of seasons,  and also used Google Slides to produce their own presentation on Kisetsu (seasons) and general Tenki (weather conditions). Students built a simple weather report and also found out about some of the different verb tenses in Japanese. Towards the end of term our work branches away from the digital and more into making and crafting, with students building their own seasons posters and weather flashcards.

Year Five and Six

The Year Five and Six students have explored the ways in which Japan depends upon and culturally celebrates rivers, water and the sea. By building a collaborative (or solo) research presentation on a specific island, port city or river the children developed vocabulary and cultural knowledge around the idea of the ocean, tourism and Japanese geography. As the term moves on we will look at some famous Japanese artwork that is connected to the sea as we build our own creations across a variety of media.

Trist,   Japanese teacher